


depraved

by humaneideas



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Death, Dreaming, M/M, dark dream stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 01:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4544127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humaneideas/pseuds/humaneideas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then Kavinsky’s laughing too, except his stomach is howling, his head thrown back, his bare neck revealed. When they finally both settle, Kavinsky is smiling – a tear in his mouth, an abnormality. Ronan wants to push his hands to the flesh and refashion it into something he’ll hate, something he won’t remember when he wakes up, but then Kavinsky speaks: and it’s not enough, never enough, but it’s a summary of something between them – the rotting flesh trying to find a home, that hate bubbling and rising until it’s a choking, awful thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	depraved

**Author's Note:**

> first fic yay
> 
> warnings: death scenes, violence, there's a lot of weird dream sequence parts that are kind of dark, body horror too. dream thief spoilers. i tried to make this canon but i added in dream kavinsky so!

_meet me @ the usual place_

 

 

The phone shivers in the middle of the night, the screen spitting light, asking for attention.

 

 

It pulls Ronan out of something; his bones coughing back to life in that same, slow way – his mind violently pulled from the dream world before his body. His muscles still lingering, he summons the strength to slap the phone away – but it’s persistent, singing into the bleak night, it’s plastic body vibrating.

 

 

Ronan only picks it up, hands rigid, because he fears it’s moaning will eventually wake Gansey.

 

 

But the phone screams still, the white screen shining, leaking light.

 

 

_where r u lynch?_  
_wakey wakey_  
_sweet dreams?_  
_lynch_

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

His back framed by the evening sky, Kavinsky leans against the hood of his car, hands folded over his stomach, head rolled back so far that his throat looks like a brilliant white stripe. He must have heard the engine of Ronan’s bmw, splitting through the silent afterthought of the evening, but he doesn’t turn, doesn’t move at all.

 

So Ronan crushes his heels into the dirt beneath him, his jacket revealing the bare bone of his shoulder, his eyes still blinking through the sleep.

 

He pauses only when he’s an arm length from Kavinsky, his brows crossed, his mouth a steady, hard line. It wilts as he stares, gaze drifting over the revealed collar bone, the flat stomach peaking out from where his shirt is rumpled beneath his arms. Without the glasses Kavinsky looks like something else – the wicked lines of his face tamed, his mouth muted into something that’s younger, warmer, foreign.

 

But he turns his profile; the shadow of his nose creeping into the moon’s sickly light, his cheekbones illuminated by the splatter of stars reflected off the hood of the car. For a moment, Ronan imagines him saying something profound or sad – a casting of Kavinsky’s lips sinking low into the teeth, his face frozen in the stage between adolescence and adulthood.

 

 

But nothing comes. Just the same wicked smile; tearing into the teeth.

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

“What do you think it’ll be like when you die?”

 

Kavinsky is in the driver’s seat, chair rolled back, his spine a mess of tangled knots, those dumb fucking glasses covering his eyes. Ronan wants to pull them off, to see what’s underneath: the rotting flesh or the hollow eyes?

 

 

He wants to say, _you’ve been visiting me in my dreams_.

 

 

And he wonders, for a moment, if this is dreaming or waking or the ghost of an in-between – his dream thoughts so invasive that they’re leaking, spilling into the real world and showing him the Dream Kavinsky, his hands just tears in fabric, his shoulders a loping line.

 

 

But this Kavinsky is real – his chest lifting and sinking, his mouth moving without saying anything, a can covered in sweat sitting between his thighs, the aluminum crushed on one side and bruised in a way that reminds Ronan of Noah’s face; the hollow of his cheek, the smudge of his mouth.

 

 

“Well?” Real Kavinsky repeats, his fingers drumming on the mouth of the can, his head swaying to a music that only he can hear.

 

 

“Why are we talking about this?”

 

“Just answer the fucking question, Lynch.” Saber-tooth snarl, his teeth crashing out of his mouth and wasting away, his hands drumming harder against the can. Ronan forgets sometimes that Kavinsky can become a flight-risk; his hands pushing into the flesh and finding a space where he can fit before leaving, the only sign of his existence the bruises and the permanent stain.

 

 

“Awful.”

 

 

Ronan doesn’t like this game that they’re playing: Kavinsky’s mouth already becoming sick with the alcohol, the drumming shoving into his bones and morphing him into something else entirely.

 

 

That’s when Kavinsky laughs, and it’s a chaotic – a spitting of his mouth, his fingers curling around his ribcage as if he can’t control his organs from slipping out. A forehead bumps against the steering wheel, the car growling beneath them even louder now, as if it senses the shift. Ronan’s knees bang against the door, his spine snapping as Kavinsky’s mouth grows _wider, wider, wider_ until it’s a flat expanse of his face.

 

 

Kavinsky grabs Ronan’s wrists, his warm fingers circling the bone, digging in hard enough to bruise. Ronan shoves against him, out of instinct, but Real Kavinsky clings, his hands locking and sinking into the flesh. Making a home.

 

“You know what I want, Lynch?” He leans forward, his bones creaking and sighing and for a moment that chaotic nature leaves him. It leaves behind a wild stump, his razor-sharp smile thinning; but his fingers are still digging into the flesh around Ronan’s wrist, his gaze still wild and hot and waiting. And Kavinsky waits, as if Ronan will answer, his beer-sick breath in Ronan’s face, his mouth hanging limp and open.

 

But Ronan doesn’t answer. He won’t. He doesn’t want to know what Kavinsky wants, because he’s imagining the black, rubber stump, a mouth blow wide and a cherry blossom left in it’s place – the carpet stained red.

 

 

Instead, he takes Ronan’s hands and he presses them to his chest; his callous fingers scraping the back of Ronan’s, spreading his fingers flat so that he can hear the stuttering pace of Kavinsky’s heart.

 

 

In this moment he’s suddenly soft and sad – his face pried open, the innards revealed, his mouth taut and simmering. When he speaks it’s like he’s spitting out his organs, turning himself inside out so that Ronan can understand the dagger smile, the lazy laugh.

 

 

 

_“I want the world to burn.”_

 

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

A crash. Burning smoke enveloped upward. There’s shouting, a mouth swallowing the light, a hand pressing into his shoulder blades, the fingers digging into the skin and leaving it singed. Ronan’s amidst this chaos, his body being shuffled back and forth between cries and moans until he’s not sure where his hands are anymore, stomached by the mass of writhing bodies.

 

But suddenly there’s nothing, no one. Just that hazy smoke, the smell of death.

 

 

That’s when he notices the front end of the white Mitsubishi, or what’s left of it, crumpled in on itself, the windows shattered, the car door barely intact as it sways. Ronan shouts, once, twice, or he tries, but his throat his hollow and empty, the words scratching up his throat in an effort to be heard.

 

 

He doesn’t see it in the dream, but he can already imagine Kavinsky – his crumpled body, his bones mangled, the devil grin torn from his face and replaced with that same, sad thing from before.

 

 

When he wakes the dream doesn’t leave him for days, it’s greedy fingers picking at his skin, unraveling the bones – prying apart his ribs and making a home inside of him, kicking into his flesh and leaving him bruised, singed. Unable to wake.

 

 

But Real Kavinsky’s death is nothing like this –

 

 

A spit of fire and ash; his body enveloped, his shouts swallowed by the body of his dream, before he’s a rag doll – his limbs crumbling, sinking, his body making a dull thud against the hood of the Mitsubishi before it slides down to the dirt, legs strewn, arms upraised as if he has been left in one final battle.

 

 

 

And Kavinsky’s gone, but he’s left all the marks – his nails pressing into the scar that hurts, drawing blood, his knuckles red with it. His mouth red with it.

 

 

 

Kavinsky’s gone but he leaves behind the bruise that never fades; the circle in the place just below Ronan’s shoulder, where the bones meet and where it hurts the most.

 

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

He wants to hate him, he does. Ronan’s body is a weapon of destruction; his knuckles always raw and red, his throat singing, hiss-spiting the words like they’re an insult. Ronan doesn’t say his name but he doesn’t need to, everyone already knows what the bruised bones mean.

 

Kavinsky’s funeral is a pathetic, washed up thing. It’s a clamor of writhing bodies, each face curling, disinterested – the summer heat thick, sinking into the muscle and tearing up the flesh. There are hands on shoulders, hands on arms; a shared mutter of half-hearted apologies, the frowns artificial.

 

Gansey tells him not to go, but Ronan goes anyway; his outfit something recycled from his Sundays at church, the tie loose, hanging around his neck like an empty vowel. He stands at the back, hands tied together in some symbolic gesture of prayer or sadness, but his mouth is still filled with hate, his tongue still sick with it.

 

Kavinsky made the poison, but Ronan swallowed it.

 

When it’s over the bodies file out in a chaos of small whispers, arms looped together and heads bowed in a camaraderie as if only saying _I’m glad it’s not us_. A thin, elegant woman with a veined hand leans over the casket, a chipped nail brushing along the edge, her face stooped in something that makes her young, faux features look old, withered. But Ronan doesn’t linger, he can’t, his stomach swollen shut, his jaw working as he bows his head and retreats.

 

This is the first night that he meets Dream Kavinsky; his mouth hanging low, his face pale but still his own.

 

“Did you like the funeral?” Kavinsky asks, but it’s not a question, really. Nothing ever is. It’s a test – one that Ronan is likely to fail, his hands still curled into fists, his mouth still wet with alcohol. But Kavinsky waits; one hand shoved forcefully into the pocket of his jeans, his face a steady, blank thing.

 

Ronan looks at him once, twice, but Kavinsky is still there, his mouth a dark smudge, his eyes open, waiting. So Ronan shakes his head; a calloused hand slapped to his forehead, and he laughs – a hiccup of a thing, his stomach curling and pulling out the parts of him that have been hidden and smothered. In between breaths he manages – “no, it was fucking terrible.”

 

And then Kavinsky’s laughing too, except his stomach is howling, his head thrown back, his bare neck revealed. When they finally both settle, Kavinsky is smiling – a tear in his mouth, an abnormality. Ronan wants to push his hands to the flesh and refashion it into something he’ll hate, something he won’t remember when he wakes up, but then Kavinsky speaks: and it’s not enough, never enough, but it’s a summary of something between them – the rotting flesh trying to find a home, that hate bubbling and rising until it’s a choking, awful thing.

 

 

“Sorry.”

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

“We always end up here.”

 

Kavinsky is sitting in his usual lazy way, his hands strewn about the dewy grass, his legs thrown in front of him like they’ve personally offended him. But there’s something different now about him. The frame of his shoulders outlined by the way Cabeswater now groans around him. He looks like a black smudge, something to wipe away, like he doesn’t belong or he doesn’t fit into the picture.

 

Cabeswater hates him; it’s metaphorical mouth swallowing his shoes, it’s fingers picking at the hem of his jacket until it’s worn and willowed and strewn across the glass like an ornamental piece.

 

 

“We always end up here,” Kavinsky repeats, his voice lacking that fatal shift, the springing of bones. Now it’s all raw tones and dirt, as if he’s hollowed out his throat enough to pick away at the insides.

 

 

He doesn’t turn, and Ronan’s not sure whether it’s because he doesn’t care or he doesn’t want to care: his heart ruinous, swallowed by his cancerous mouth and downed with oil, gasoline. He sets his body on fire and wants it to turn to shards – his insides only a ghost of a thing.

 

 

Ronan had once thought that he could handle Kavinsky. He could handle Kavinsky like Gansey could handle him. But he was beginning to learn that this was untrue. Kavinsky was still a bloody knot of a boy. All that nothingness suddenly alive, throbbing; his wet mouth a round o without the words, his feet kicking the air, his stomach looping endlessly.

 

 

“You don’t like it here,” Ronan says, and it’s meant to be a question but it comes out a fact. Because he knows he doesn’t. Kavinsky is not soft or magical. He’s the hard edge of a knife, the slash across the throat, that violent red blood. And confined to this place he is something less, his hands endlessly tired, his features always a shade of green.

 

 

“Fuck no.”

 

 

And he turns; a small sigh of his profile, his face pitched in darkness, the rest of his body lit golden from Cabeswater.

 

 

Ronan thinks: this is the Kavinsky of my dreams. A monster of a thing. A gap between his teeth and his fingers always around the trigger of the gun.

 

 

But this seems to still be Kavinsky, his face still steeped in boyish youth, his tired eyes illuminated by the circles that wear into his skin. Like this he even seems like the before, and Ronan imagines him before Cabeswater, before Virginia; when he lived in New Jersey and his mouth didn’t yet taste like poison and his muscles weren’t made of glass and he didn’t know the weight of a gun or how many pills it took to send someone to sleep.

 

 

But this is an imaginary Kavinsky too, a hollowed out, self-made version of someone who’s more than just lines and the hole in his chest.

 

 

“I want to leave,” Kavinsky whispers, so low that Ronan’s not even sure he’s heard it.

 

 

But he did.

 

And when he wakes it sits with him.

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

“Do you believe in God?”

 

And Ronan waits – because this can’t be everything, his life suddenly a culmination of backward speaking, his stomach thrown outward, his insides revealed and spilling. But Kavinsky’s hand is at his stomach, holding them in; the touch of him warm even through the fabric of the shirt. And this is dangerous, Ronan knows, even if Dream Kavinsky isn’t _real_ , even if Ronan will always wake up with the blood in his mouth, his throat rotten with it.

 

 

But Kavinsky has always been dangerous: his dagger smile sharp – his teeth sinking into the flesh and leaving marks like this body has become his prize, the half-moons singing in the spot where Ronan’s shoulder meets his neck. They aren’t permanent, but they never feel temporary, because nothing about Kavinsky can be temporary – something of him still lingering in this dream place he hates.

 

 

“Why are you asking?” Ronan tests, but something about him is waiting, terrified –

 

 

because Kavinsky wants to pull apart the flesh, pick at the bones underneath. There’s something unholy and cruel about a boy that searches for the thread; his fingers pulling it loose until it’s _unraveled, unraveling, undoing_. Him, looking for the dark things underneath so that he can find a home somewhere, anywhere that will take him.

 

 

But Ronan can’t do the same – the loose thread thrown away, forgotten. Because Kavinsky is still terrified of the monster under the bed, it’s hand wrapped around the ankle; this terrible, malignant thing. Kavinsky’s undoing means pouring out the dark, secret thing within him – his chest pried open, the insides spilling and never ending until he’s an empty thing. As if Ronan has taken something from within him, pulled it from his stomach and asked for everything back. But Kavinsky has nothing left to give.

 

 

Kavinsky doesn't reply, his hand still at Ronan’s stomach, his face dangerously close. He was never a gentle thing, but in moments like this Ronan almost mistakes his hunger for kindness; Kavinsky’s voice low and soft, his touch warm and solid.

 

 

But beneath the solid flesh is always the monster of a boy – his stomach always howling, the moonlight hanging between the gaps of his teeth as they tear into the bone.

 

 

 

 

///

 

 

 

 

He says –

This is what happens to the boy under the bed, his flesh made of wounds, his heart made of lead.

 

 

He says –

This is what happens to the boy with the spitfire heart, his hands made of bruises, his tongue made of gold.

 

 

 

He says –

This is what happens when you love an empty boy with nothing left; his mouth a black smear, his palms upturned and giving but there’s never anything in them.

 

 

 

He says –

_If I had anything left to give, I’d give it to you._

 

 

 

He says –

“And this is what happens when you wake up and you pull the shitty, fucking nightmare with you.”

 

And he holds up this gnarled black thing, it’s edges strewn, it’s fleshy carcass molten, rotting. A bad piece of dream, Ronan knows. Pulled from that same dark place that swells and cries. He’s seen it too.

 

 

But when Kavinsky holds the dream piece, it’s like an extension of his arm. The dark mess tangling with his fingers, with the shadow of his wrist. All of him suddenly infected with it – his flesh tearing and revealing a moldy lump of bones, the ends snarled and fragmented until they’re not bones at all. Not really.

 

This is when Ronan realizes that this is a dream. Because Kavinsky’s existence was now this: the lost time between sleeping and waking, in knowing that it is real but still being unable to see it. He is neither dead nor living, his breathing a cacophony of sighs, his Dream version always waiting with a pursed lip, a hollowed tongue.

 

“So. You don’t want to take me with you?”

 

The Dream Kavinsky asks – except there’s no mouth anymore; just a black hole and a mess of empty flesh.


End file.
